There’s a bit of truth in that, but the analogy isn’t altogether helpful. The citizen>state relationship (and IMHO that is the correct use of the ‘greater than’ sign ) is between two entities which are very different from one another. It’s a fact, I’m afraid, that the big difference means the best interests of one might very well not be aligned with the best interests of the other.

There is a view that the EU should be much more about a community of similar entities - the member states - working together to achieve the goals they have in common. Spain wants low unemployment and steady GDP growth and support for academic research and access to fish exactly as the UK wants those things and Croatia does too. But we also have goals which aren’t common. The Danes want a national ID card and the Brits hate the idea. The French want the fundamentals of government to be back-scratching and rioting and it to be illegal for the press to reveal whether politicians are cheats (on their partners, to be specific, but a cheat is a cheat). All those things seem less popular in Germany.

The only one of my Brexiteer friends that I’ve talked about it with argues that in the beginning the Common Market confined itself only to enabling the things we had in … er … common. It was happy for us to stay different on all the other stuff. But it has transformed itself into the EU - an institution which thinks it knows best. Diversity on anything serious is not to be tolerated (although we can still keep Morris dancing and driving on the left) and everyone is to be bent to the will of the super-state. In that sense the relationship would be, as you say, more like that of an individual and a state. If you think your national government is irredeemably useless then I can see that that might look like a good idea (an Italian once told me that that was a common view there). But the Brits think that our government is only transiently useless and that it has at least the potential to regain its senses and maintain things the way we like them.

I am starting to think that by giving parliament a vote on if/when the backstop is triggered she might get the current deal through.
I am also thinking that I would like pie and chips for me tea instead of chickpea curry.

That would be amusing. If we want not to trigger the backstop don’t we have to either reach an agreement with the EU about the final deal or persuade the EU to agree to an extension of the implementation period. We can’t not trigger it unilaterally. So parliament would have to decide between caving in to them over the final deal or shelling out however much money they want to let us continue in a state of limbo.

If we don’t agree a future deal with the EU by the end of the implementation period (End of 2020 iirc) then we go into it automatically and then can’t leave unless the EU agrees.
The actual deal May is flogging is just a temporary deal while we work out that future deal - the rest of it is just fluff.

This expalins it I hope:

The Withdrawal Agreement (which is what is being voted on next week) sets out the terms on which we actually leave and arrangements for the “transition period”. It’s this agreement that Mrs May has been trying to negotiate for the last two years, and she’s now putting it through Parliament.

The transition period kicks in on the day we leave the EU – currently scheduled for 31 March 2019 – and lasts until the end of 2020.

During the transition period, we’ll be negotiating a second deal with the EU on our long-term “future relationship”. If we can’t strike that second deal before the end of the transition period, we either extend the transition, or deploy the “backstop arrangements”.

The backstop is the plan B that prevents a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But as the government’s now-infamous legal advice shows, if we get into the backstop, we can’t leave without the EU’s permission.

As far as I can tell, in a rational universe the WA wouldn’t be that exciting - it’s some shit that will only be temporary. There are issues that neither side likes, but it should end soon enough.

But the shitstorm over the WA precurses the debate over the final agreement. There is no chance of parliament agreeing over this. The Brexiteers want a totally free of regulation world of piracy, with essentially no tax and no state, and there is no way that such a state would get a sensible trade agreement with the EU.

I think that there is no real support in the public or in parliament for such a system, but any other system is basically Remainn in some form.

David Davis has given interview to The House magazine.
He explains *that* photograph.
“It was a setup by the Commission...But you ask yourself, who’s the person better briefed, the person who’s got it in their head or the person who’s got a foot of papers in front of them. Eh?”